Category Archives: Reimbursement

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While shared savings could be several years in the future for fledgling accountable care organizations, there are shortcuts for physician practices in ACOs to generate population health revenue immediately, explains Tim Gronniger, senior vice president of development and strategy for Caravan Health.

The webinar provided key details on the key cornerstones of Caravan Health’s ACO success, including staffing and patient engagement secrets; payoffs from detailed MACRA and MIPS reporting; the benefits of effort-based quality metrics over outcomes-based data; two critical 2018 strategies Caravan Health’s ACOs use to build on their success, and much more.

Among other data, detail tables in a physician practice’s Quality Use and Resource Reports (QRURs) pinpoint specialist referral networks for Medicare beneficiaries, explains William Holding, consultant, PDA, Inc., which can help physician practices determine their highest value referral pathways.

In this audio interview, Holding explains the benefits of tapping CMS-generated QRUR reports to enhance performance under Merit-Based Incentive Payment Systems (MIPS), one of two payment paths for physician reimbursement under MACRA.

The engagement of patients, particularly those with multiple chronic conditions, continues to challenge healthcare providers.

However, as Steven Valentine, vice president of advisory consulting services for Premier Inc., explains in this podcast, clinicians actually have a host of tools at their fingertips to engage patients—tools they must employ in order to succeed in value-based healthcare.

Prior to enrollment in MACRA’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), physician practices should request their confidential Quality Use and Resource Report (QRUR) from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for crucial performance feedback, advises Barry Allison, chief information officer, the Center for Primary Care.

In this podcast, Allison explains how to obtain a QRUR report, the origins of QRUR quality and cost data, and the benefits of leveraging QRUR feedback to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivered to attributed Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and ultimately prosper under MACRA’s multi-pronged approach.

Rather than threatening to drop Medicare volumes or open a concierge practice, small and solo physician practices daunted by MACRA technology requirements should sit tight and avail themselves of current and promised education and training from CMS to support the transition, advises Eric Levin, director of strategic services, McKesson.

In this audio interview, Levin describes what’s at risk for practices that don’t engage in at least one physician reporting program and four benefits of tapping into MACRA technical assistance from CMS.

While it does not immediately eliminate fee for service, a retrospective upside-only payment model is helping to transform the spirit of the payor-provider relationship, notes Lili Brillstein, director of the Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (BCBSNJ) Episodes of Care (EOC) initiative where this methodology has been implemented.

Listen as Ms. Brillstein describes how Horizon’s application of retrospective methodology across all episodes expands the program’s reach and opportunities while fostering a no-risk environment conducive to collaboration.

One key preventive metric for the largest U.S. sponsor of Medicare Shared Savings Programs (MSSPs) is the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV), which CHS has set as a core goal. In this audio interview, Ms. Tkachev describes the rationale behind this goal, how data analytics drives AWVs, and the dramatic correlation between AWVs and patient attribution.

When Bon Secours adapted Geisinger’s case management model six years ago and embedded nurse navigators within physician practices, there was reluctance and even resistance from some “solo cowboy” physician practitioners, recalls Robert Fortini, PNP, chief clinical officer for Bon Secours Medical Group. Today, providers are fiercely protective of the cadre of 70 nurse navigators, who do the “heavy lifting” of chronic care management.

In this audio interview, Fortini offers some lessons learned for organizations considering the embedded case management approach, including budgetary planning, calculations, and “icing-on-the-cake” outcomes for patients and hospitals.

When Arcturus Health Care did the math, CMS’s new Chronic Care Management (CCM) code added up to a potential $100,000 per month in revenue for its four physician practices, or $1 million annually. Having successfully billed Medicare for a half dozen patients enrolled in CCM, Arcturus’s Clinical Quality Assurance Manager Debra Burbary, RN, outlines development of the patient care plan and establishment of patient goals—two CCM requirements facilitated by Arcturus’s electronic health record (EHR).

The use of a care coordinator boosts the quality of care a physician practice provides and thus its potential for earning incentives in Humana’s Physician Quality Rewards program, explains Chip Howard, Humana’s vice president of payment innovation in the provider development center of excellence.

Here, Howard describes the value Humana places on the care coordination function, and describes the support and training available to physician practices at each level of the three-tiered rewards program, a hallmark of Humana’s Accountable Care Continuum.

Chip Howard will share how Humana’s program supports physicians’ transition from volume to value and helps them become successful population health managers during a December 16, 2014 webinar, Physician Quality Rewards for Population Health Management, a 45-minute program sponsored by The Healthcare Intelligence Network.